Do you guys find Bass on your side imaging?

[PurpleCatMan]

I know in other regions, side and down imaging is widely used to find bass in offshore areas. I've read that guys won't even fish when scouting a lake for a tournament, they'll just run sidescan.

This process doesn't seem like it applies here becuase of all the vegetation in most of our lakes, but maybe i'm doing it wrong?

I do find it very useful for finding structure, and bait.... but not so much bass.

What's your take on it?

[Deitz Dittrich]

I would sell my boat and put SI on a bathtub if I had to.. I cant live without it at this point for learning a new lake, or finding out what the weeds are doing on a given lake. Yes I have found bass on SI, but I use it more to find where a bass should be, rather than actually see them. That said, yes, I see fish, you can see maybe how many fish are on an off shore spot or if its just randoms.. It doesnt work well IN the weeds, but it works great to run down a weed edge and mark the 10 best spots or so to check.. IE harder bottom, points(they dont have to be big) or inside turns, weed density changes.. ECT.

[Nick Kuhn]

You can find them, it's just very unlikely you will. Unless they are just chilling on a mud flat, seeing fish is pretty tough on side imaging. But you can pick up fish as small as crappies and bluegill, so you would see bass as well. But again, usually there are weeds, rocks, wood, or other things down there that will be way more prominent than any fish.

[TurnUpTheFishing]

Yeah, like already stated I use it as a tool to find fishy looking areas. I can think of one time though when I ran across a large school of fish sitting in the open on the end of a large point. I told my partner there appears to be a big school down there and he proceeded to cast to the spot and get bit seconds after his lure hit the water. We caught a good amount of fish on that spot but that was the only time I saw and caught a bunch of fish with my SI.

[KickNBass]

I've done it a few times. As others said, it's hard to find them in the weeds but I've found them on the outside of a weedline and caught them a few times. Helps to have your range smaller. I also have been picking up schools of sunfish in the weeds, suspended above pretty well so you could see bass too but it probably isn't as recognizable as a bait ball.

[RK]

More of a structure/cover finding tool in most cases for me. Great for scoping out weedlines and finding points, pockets and transitions. It's insanely good for finding and quickly mapping out hard bottomed areas. I fish a lake with a big gravel seam running through a coontail bed that then extends out onto a long point. With my old 2D electronics I knew it was there, but mapping its boundaries would have taken me a good hour. With SI, 3 passes and about 5 minutes and I had icons all the way around the thing.

I will say that for finding suspended smallies, SI is almost not fair. Haven't had too many chances to do that since I got SI units last season, but the couple times I have, a school of smallies 15' down over 32' of water is pretty obvious...

[FshBloodRiverMud]

You can find anything on you SI. Just need to learn how to intrepret your images. WIder and faster the scan size the harder to find individual fish. Start doing the math on your scan area, speed, and your screen size. You'll soon realize just how small a big fish can look on your SI when you've got a big scan area.

Plenty of resources on-the-line' to help you understand how to find fish in weeds, or anywhere for that matter. Takes a lot of time, practice, and reading from the experts. More you understand about how SI works the better you will be able to intrepret your images. I'm adjusting settings all the time depending on what i'm looking for.

I remember a time a few years ago, in the fall, slowly putzn by docks and tossing a jig into a dock only when i seen a bass on the SI. That was fun.

Bass are generally a pretty small fish. Adjust your settings accordingly for the amount of data you have on your small depth finder screen.

[KickNBass]

This one produced for me:

[PurpleCatMan]

What was your depth here Kickn?

[Igor Drackenwolf]

This is an EXCELLENT resource to learn how to interpret images of all kinds, including SI. Not only are there multiple threads exploring images and dissecting them, but there are experts - even some HB reps - who chime in and help with image interpretation...

You can just read, or you can sign up for a free account (just like here) and ask your own questions, or even post images and ask people to help you interpret. Great resource.

http://www.bbcboards.net/humminbird-image-interpretation/

The site is bassboatcentral, this is their forum section.

[KickNBass]

About 8-12 feet. The SI is at 46 feet.

[FshBloodRiverMud]

The site igor mentioned is where i learned 90% of what i know about SI.

[Larson15]

I generally look for schools of bluegill

[Igor Drackenwolf]

The site igor mentioned is where i learned 90% of what i know about SI.

It's a highly trafficked site, so there's lot's of people asking lots of questions and giving lots of answers. Aside from that, Wayne P. and Doug V. are Humminbird experts, and usually check in a couple times a day to answer questions.